Dahomey

Mati Diop · 2024 · 68 minutes

In 2021, 26 objects from the Kingdom of Dahomey leave Paris and are returned to present-day Benin. How should these art treasures, stolen from ancestors, be received in a country which has reinvented itself in their absence?

Programmer’s Note

Following her appearance in Claire Denis’s 35 Shots of Run (2008), Matt Diop began making films of her own, beginning with Atlantiques (2009), a digital short about a group of Senegalese friends who attempt a harrowing sea crossing. It’s a brilliant debut, and in the fifteen years since she has continued making compelling work about immigration and the legacies of French colonialism. In a recent profile of Diop in The New Yorker, Denis says Diop, who grew up in France and is of mixed race, “never saw herself as Black before my film.” Diop confirms it. “I went through the mirror, and not just as a director-actress. Something had actually changed.”

In 2019, Diop became the first Black woman to compete at the Cannes film festival as a director and was as surprised as anyone when her debut feature, Atlantics, a fantastical, genre-inspired expansion of her first film, won the Grand Prix. With her latest work, Dahomey, Diop is again blurring the lines between documentary and fiction, giving voice (quite literally) to the spoils of colonial conquest. It’s not quite like any film you’ve seen before.

Following its premiere at the Berlinale, where it won the Golden Bear for Best Film, Dahomey traveled to other major fests around the world, including Cinéma du Réel in Paris, Toronto, New York, and London. We are proud to present it in Knoxville.

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